Learned
by The Grynne
Summary: [Harry Potter crossover, preseries timeline] Hermione travels farther than she ever thought was possible. River discovers how much there is still to learn.
1. lead me to some new ambush

_**1. lead me to some new ambush, to some fresh mistake**_

At last the life support dies, emptying out with a last shuddering exhalation of moist air. With no pressure behind it, it simply fans out through the pipes and filters. Into the arctic-cold living quarters of the migrator _Endeavour_ where it condenses immediately. Vapour into rain, and rain into ice. Ice and rain hang suspended for a moment, almost like they had been bespelled.

And it is beautiful, a ceiling of stars, Alasdair thinks numbly before they fall – gently. Gravity not being like it was only a couple of hours ago.

Nothing to do except wait. He can grip his wand and shout _Reparo_ until his face turns blue(r) and receive only deadened looks of incomprehension.

He sighs, past resignation. This is not how he planned to go. He looks at the painting on his cabin wall, his precious cargo, silent and motionless for these last nineteen years. The brown eyes of the woman in the painting convey no more a sense of disappointment than they do accusation, or despair.

_It is as they have said. We are all Muggles, uprooted from the Earth._

* * *

It was the second youngest Gage boy, Alasdair. His great-grandfather used to hand in essays scrawled on the wing feathers of Scottish dovecotes to her Arithmancy class, she remembered. A quick fifteen year old with dark eyes and darker curls, no head at all for Potions but without peer in Transfiguration. The adventurous, farseeing type, Gages. Unlike most of the old families, every member had taken Muggle Studies decades before the subject was compulsory.

Even as a portrait, she heard things; she could hardly help it. Drought, famine and ecological collapse all cannot help but affect the wizarding world. The muggles apparently had come up with a plan. Salvation is opportunity in another's hands. So no, Hermione was not at all surprised to see who it was.

* * *

Her voice was like a recitation of demiurgic numeric pairs sounded off the panellings of a library.

"My answer is yes, Mr. Gage."

"Headmistress, you haven't even heard—"

"Should I need to hear something which I already know? You wish to lead a group and journey to the new system with the colonists, correct?" She fixed him with a crinkled but stern gaze. The Earth-bound nature of magic was a hypothesis wizards had been trying to effectively disprove for centuries.

"You want to test if magical theory as we know it will hold there. A noble ambition, especially since you personally will not live to reach this distant new earth. Which is why you need me to go with you."

"To teach the generation that arrives, yes," Alasdair said, relieved. "If common belief is accurate, a wizard is not a wizard when he is out in space. Everything that can't be learned from books would die with us." He smiled abruptly like one who had solved a difficult and complicated puzzle. "But you, Professor Granger. Well, you are not so fragile a container for knowledge."

Hermione nodded as if this confirmed everything she had thought. "Then we are of a mind, Mr. Gage."


	2. in her wake no waters breed or break

_**2. in her wake no waters breed or break**_

It cuts through the orbit of Sihnon on schedule, the fifty-eighth migrator vessel of the fleet to arrive. They have been hailing it with signals for thirty days without reply. No sounds of tears or laughter came from the _Endeavour_, no crackling chorus of thousands of voices in a Chinese rendition of _Auld Lang Syne_.

The settlers who have been there the longest know what that means.

* * *

"_Shàngdì a_. You work fast, I must say. I heard they only boarded the ship last month."

"_Qîyè-jia_ like myself, got to keep an eye out for t'opportunities. I know a couple of gov'ment folks that cracked open the old freezer box."

"Carrion birds, that's what you are. _Zheng'de luòjîng-tóushí (1)._ Getting good and fat off the bones of the dead."

"Hey, now. Wasn't me that's responsible for a mechanical failure, _Lâo Sòng_. They're over a hundred years gone, anyhow. T'stuff would only go to waste, or be locked in a vault where none but the gov'nors could see it. That'd be a shame. Genuine Earth That Was artefacts – take this pretty picture here – they ain't ever going to be replaced."

"That is a marvellous specimen."

"Moment I clapped eyes on it, I thought to myself: _míngguì'de caíbâo_, who else but _Lâo Sòng_ will know how to appreciate it?"

"Indeed. Well it's an oil canvas. Surface is largely intact. Good. Observable cracks but nothing really severe. Cold kept any infestation at bay."

"Old lady came out of it better than the owners, eh?"

"The signature is unreadable. Dated…looks like 2040 AD. The style of the portrait is more eighteenth-century, however. Any documentation?"

"You even got to ask?"

"It saves me from inevitable disappointment."

"_Ràngwô kànkan._ Them that had it, it was a family from England. The Gages of Staffordshire."

"Landowners. Rich."

"You think so?"

"To have something this size in their cabin? Oh yes. Maybe she was a relative."

"You'll find her a good home, right?"

"If that matters to a businessman like yourself, Mr. Kramer, yes I will."

"Good. That's real good."

* * *

(1) "Throw stones at the man down the well"; similar to "kick a man when he is down". 


	3. how much our meeting owed

_**3. how much our meeting owed**_

Hermione thinks she must be dreaming again. It is so terribly difficult to conceive of any alternative, some erstwhile recollection or explainable condition to illumine her brain from its fog of doubt. (More terrifying: the proverbial scissors cuts through bolts of shroud and fog and reveals them a baited guardsman, protecting an already useless and emptied vault. Not a single book or sheet of parchment sitting on these rotting shelves.)

She thought there was darkness before but she was wrong before. Because here she is, whilst true darkness cannot be borne, there's no living it no breathing it. So this must be a kind of comatose sleep. And this, this the dream one has before awaking. The deepening sensation of becoming one's animated self again. Leaving the timeless currents behind. And as the backdrop, the familiar sounds of children, their voices carried across wide rooms at just above the note of a whisper.

Can she make herself known? Will she get another chance?

* * *

River at twelve reminds Simon not at all of himself at that age, a fact that should surprise no one who ever bothered to really find out anything about his sister, but when their own parents cannot be counted as being among the initiated he can hardly expect better from relative strangers, can he?

At the same age Simon was tireless in his willingness to learn. A sponge, eagerly imbibing every chemistry and history text, covertly loading the latest manifestos of the neo-futurist philosophers for light reading.

He enjoyed his lessons and still does. River has not technically had a lesson since she was eight.

"Have I told you yet, young lady, about the _super_ prestigious programs we have available at the Academy? Guaranteed to challenge even an impossible nuisance like yourself."

"Not any time in the last five minutes Mr Stapleton. I don't think you have."

"It takes only one word from you and I could have your dormitory fitted in a matter of hours. We won't even have to waste time talking to your parents since they've already agreed to support any decision you make."

"They are very supportive."

"All provided that you are interested. Of course. "

"Of course."

"You _are_ interested?"

"I certainly have been giving you that impression haven't I?"

"You mustn't believe impressions. Hypocrisy is the invisible flag that gets raised wherever there is civilisation."

"And before civilisation."

"People were more honest. They also led shorter and less productive lives."

"Between blood then, River. Tell me."

"Anything, Simon."

"Do you want to go to that place?"

"There is nothing they can teach me there."


	4. light strengthens

_**4. light strengthens, and the room takes shape**_

Life and magic, hand in hand, their fragile flourishings.

Sixteen _mi_ below the iron and silicon, halogen-green surface of Capital City, called Garden of the New Worlds, is true _terra nullius_; a little sand, some ice, fossils of rivers predating human artifice, the airy bubble of terra-forming. Dead stone reaching down and down, crystalised fingers of lava, a cold rough boulder of a planet orbiting its mostly un-singular star.

Asleep, deaf and blind, without even the murmuring, delicate heartbeat of protozoan dreams, Osiris awaited the miracle touch.

All chronicles of creation begin with a segregation: light torn out of darkness, the parting of earth and sky. The closure of a consummation.

Its fruit is _genesis_.

* * *

The boy and girl…

Like twins with their own private language, graceful and solemn as academics one instant, laughing like unintelligible small children the next, their English interlaced with foreign phrases that sound like Chinese. Inseparable as twins, too.

Hermione does not know what they are: muggle, wizard, or perhaps something else entirely.

There is genius here; she is familiar with that. But there is also a prickling sensation, frustratingly new and unexplainable, a warmth spreading through her body like a merry fire after a night in the frozen cold. Everything seems to thaw between their voices and their presence.

When she finally summons the courage to speak to them - _Who are you? Where am I? How did I come to be here?_ – only belatedly aware of her barrage of questions, the boy (a young man, really) stares open-mouthed, stunned and horrified. His sister is merely intrigued, her brown eyes large as saucers.

"I'm River. This is Simon, _wo gege_. _Fuqin_ bought you at auction two weeks ago. This is our library, Simon's and mine. You used to be in the dining room but _muqin_ said she couldn't eat with your watching. Have you always been able to talk?"

"Why, I…"

Hermione stops. After a moment's thought she is forced to admit:

"No, River. Actually, I have not talked for some time." Asking a quick blessing from Merlin under her breath, Hermione gives caution up to the wind (pictorially speaking, as the sea breeze in her canvas has started to stir again, bringing with it the long absent smell of salt and linseed oil) and begins to tell them about what she is, the world she left behind, and why.

* * *

Afterwards, River turns to her still startled brother with a look of triumph.

"The 'third eye', _wo'de pigou_. I _told_ you there was a logical explanation."

"River here," Simon explains to Hermione with what was either a touch of apology or embarrassment, "can read people's minds."

"I see," says Hermione.

A painting holds the commitments of the once-living person it depicts, however the world outside may alter. Alasdair Gage, centuries ago, aware of this, chose Hermione the campaigner for werewolf rights, Hermione the British Ambassador to the Transylvanian wizarding community, and most especially, Hermione the Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to cross the galaxies with his small expedition.

Now, as she looks over the two restless, eager teenagers, the background of the room comes into focus, acquiring detail and rich, exotic colour, almost like a painting itself – revealing an array of odd-shaped illuminated screens and dark bookshelves, but no wands, or any other charmed objects.

_There _is_ magic here, Alasdair. It is weak, so weak, the magic of a world just bringing itself out of inertness and chaos, but I have found it._

It is clear to Hermione what has to be done.


	5. dramatically, with dragons

_**5. dramatically, with dragons**_

They say: In this year, on this particular day, time diverges like a river.

Along one terrible strand of possibility, darkness will descend, and the imprints of twenty generations will stand to be erased. The pull of time will reverse like an unheralded storm, overturning the desert until up is down, every flame smothered, to mete a silent, painless euthanasia.

If this happens, it will be pointless to try to make ready your affairs; whatever important task you are in the middle of – a building you are raising, a book you are writing, a lover you must kiss one more time else you'll die – that you are prepared will not make an ounce of difference to anyone. There is no possible preparation.

If this happens, it will be like there was no terra-forming. It will be like the world never was.

What happens along the other path is exactly the same, except for one thing.

Along the second path, the world, in the same instant it also ends, will be reborn from a single, precious egg. It must be a very large egg, they say, often with a smile, to contain the entire universe; as the shell cracks, things spill out from it, each falling into its rightful place.

You will not know the new world from the old one by looking. The building will still be lopsided, half-in and half-out of the ground; the pen will be unmoved in your hand. Your beloved will embrace you with a sigh, and you live to kiss her again. The sun still shines over the planets.

As one, the imams and holy men laugh at this. Most people consider it an old-fashioned superstition; so old in fact, nobody has been able to claim it, or knows anything about its origins, save that the myth does not come from Earth That Was.

But all throughout the inner planets people have heard the story.

* * *

"How far back would I have to go?"

"_Meimei_! You can't be serious."

"Your brother is right."

"But suppose I could. How far back?"

"It's unthinkable. You think what you can do with plants is impressive? Calling the lightning, divining water? That's nothing compared to what this involves. Don't you understand? Geoalchemy is a fuzzy discipline. So much of it is theoretical, unproven, for just this reason."

"Exactly, no one has ever tried."

"They _have_ tried. Cleverer and more experienced witches and wizards than you, young lady, have tried. It is simply beyond any person's abilities. Do you know how many wizards in concert it took to part the Red Sea?"

"Irrelevant."

"It took more than one, and one is all you'll have. You can't even know that your magic will work. If magic is ontologically prior to life, then very well, it might; but if it were the other way around, you would be trapped there! With no rescue, no way to return."

"It _will_ work. Hermione, don't _you_ understand? Terra-forming is just fantasy! How can a graveyard of machines create life where there was none? My plan will work because if it doesn't, if it _didn't_, then none of us would be here."

* * *

Her books say (so she remembers): "Where there is orchestrated intent and the co-arrangement of opposites – the living and the lifeless, the material and the immaterial, the metamorphic and the constant, the fluid and the inert – there you will find magic."

Their knowledge, of which Hermione was once so protective, so proud, has never seemed more inadequate.

* * *

"River…"

"Simon?"

"You don't have to do this."

She laughs: a girlish chuckle.

"I do, Simon. If nothing else, I have to do this."

* * *

They build the time-turner so that it is also a shuttle, with a large enough airlock that River can move easily in and out once she has assumed her animal shape; and it is Simon's idea that they fill every corner and unoccupied surface with living plants, a tiny garden of serene energy. Something for River's power to draw on.

If she is wrong - Simon dares not even say it, will not allow it said. But if she is wrong, River thinks she will at least be able to pick the tomatoes and long beans, the lemons with their waxy skin, and survive on those for a little while.

"Something funny?"

"Nothing." River smiles at her brother. "Just you."

And once she has started looking - started the task of memorising every irritable expression, every plane of his deft hands, which are like extensions of his mind, always knowing how every part fits together - she finds that it hurts to stop.

* * *

"This isn't good bye, Simon."

"It's four hundred years, for you."

"I'll go to sleep, I'll hibernate. Maybe I'll wake up every now and then to spread a few legends, make sure that the future me knows what she has to. Then I'll come and find you. The second I go back in time, you'll see me; I'll burst right out of that lake. A dragon right in Central Park! You'll love it."

She carefully holds up the living painting by its new and lighter frame.

"Are you ready to do some travelling?"

As the shuttle comes within her vision, Hermione thinks: _This is it. This is what being alive felt like, this need to explore. Oh, how I did forget this hunger?_

"Take us up, River. I want to see how this all began."

This time, she plans to stay awake for every minute for it.

* * *

Perhaps it is only Simon's imagination, or the tears that are threatening to spill from his eyes, but as the space transport vanishes in a blur of light, taking his sister to a dead planet around a very ordinary star, the sun over Osiris seems to become a little brighter; as if there is real magic in it now, and before it was only a ball of fire.

And the world, resurrected, is at once just the same, and beautifully new.

The End

6 August 2007


End file.
